Soviets declare war on Japan; invade Manchuria - Aug 08, 1945 - HISTORY.com Soviets declare war on Japan; invade Manchuria Share this: Soviets declare war on Japan; invade Manchuria Author Soviets declare war on Japan; invade Manchuria URL Publisher A+E Networks On this day in 1945, the Soviet Union officially declares war on Japan, pouring more than 1 million Soviet soldiers into Japanese-occupied Manchuria, northeastern China, to take on the 700,000-strong Japanese army. The dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima by the Americans did not have the effect intended: unconditional surrender by Japan. Half of the Japanese inner Cabinet, called the Supreme War Direction Council, refused to surrender unless guarantees about Japan’s future were given by the Allies, especially regarding the position of the emperor, Hirohito. The only Japanese civilians who even knew what happened at Hiroshima were either dead or suffering terribly. Japan had not been too worried about the Soviet Union, so busy with the Germans on the Eastern front. The Japanese army went so far as to believe that they would not have to engage a Soviet attack until spring 1946.

But the Soviets surprised them with their invasion of Manchuria, an assault so strong (of the 850 Japanese soldiers engaged at Pingyanchen, 650 were killed or wounded within the first two days of fighting) that Emperor Hirohito began to plead with his War Council to reconsider surrender. The recalcitrant members began to waver. Related Videos The Avalon Project : Soviet Declaration of War on Japan 2000 - Soviet Declaration of War on Japan London, Aug., 8, 1945 - Foreign Commissar Molotoff's (sic) announcement of the declaration of war, as broadcast by Moscow, follows: On Aug. 8, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the U.S.S.R. Molotoff received the Japanese Ambassador, Mr. Sato, and gave him, on behalf of the Soviet Government, the following for transmission to the Japanese Government: "After the defeat and capitulation of Hitlerite Germany, Japan became the only great power that still stood for the continuation of the war.

"The demand of the three powers, the United States, Great Britain and China, on July 26 for the unconditional surrender of the Japanese armed forces was rejected by Japan, and thus the proposal of the Japanese Government to the Soviet Union on mediation in the war in the Far East loses all basis. "Taking into consideration the refusal of Japan to capitulate, the Allies submitted to the Soviet Government a proposal to join the war against Japanese aggression and thus shorten the duration of the war, reduce the number of victims and facilitate the speedy restoration of universal peace. "Loyal to its Allied duty, the Soviet Government has accepted the proposals of the Allies and has joined in the declaration of the Allied powers of July 26. "The Soviet Government considers that this policy is the only means able to bring peace nearer, free the people from further sacrifice and suffering and give the Japanese people the possibility of avoiding the dangers and destruction suffered by Germany after her refusal to capitulate unconditionally. "In view of the above, the Soviet Government declares that from tomorrow, that is from Aug.

9, the Soviet Government will consider itself to be at war with Japan." WORLD WAR II WORLD WAR II FIND OUT MORE In 1939, Nazi Germany invaded its neighboring countries, beginning a world war that left about 40 million people dead. Unlike World War I, this was high-speed warfare, or BLITZKRIEG . It ended with the discovery of the terrible truth about the Nazi HOLOCAUST and the unleashing of the ATOM BOMB . Table 59. A WORLD AT WAR 1939 Germany invades Poland; Britain and France declare war 1940 Germany invades most of western Europe; Italy enters war 1941 Germany invades Yugoslavia, Greece, Soviet Union; Japan attacks US 1942 Japan invades southeast Asia and Pacific 1944 Allied victory HOW DID THE WAR BEGIN? The military power of Nazi Germany grew unchecked until its tanks invaded Poland. In 1939, Britain and France declared war against Hitler, but in 1940 he invaded the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Denmark, and Norway. Only a period of air warfare, the Battle of Britain, saved the United Kingdom from invasion.

WHY WAS THIS A WORLD WAR? The Allies included British, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, and South Africans, as well as exiled French and Poles. They were joined in 1941 by two giants—the Soviet Union and the US. The Axis alliance of Germany and Italy was extended to include Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Japan. WAR IN THE PACIFIC In 1941, Japan launched an unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor, a US naval base in Hawaii. The US, the world’s most powerful nation, entered the war. The Pacific conflict with Japan lasted nearly four years. WHEN DID THE TIDE TURN? In 1942, the US smashed Japanese naval power at the Battle of Midway. Allied victories in North Africa allowed an advance through Italy in 1943. In heavy fighting on Europe’s Eastern Front, the Russians defeated the Germans at Stalingrad. By 1945, the Allies were invading Germany from east and west. BLITZKRIEG Blitzkrieg means “lightning war” in German. The term was first used in 1939 to describe the tactics of high-speed warfare that launched the Nazi invasion of Europe.

It was made possible by new technology and weapons. WHAT WERE THE NEW WAYS OF WAGING WAR? Blitzkrieg used fast tanks and aircraft to bypass ground defenses. Paratroops were dropped behind enemy lines. Civilians died in cities that were bombed. The British shortened blitzkrieg to “blitz” to describe the massive bombing of their cities. The Allies also adopted blitzkrieg tactics and bombed German cities into rubble. This war also saw the development of radar for detecting enemy aircraft, as well as submarine warfare, flying bombs, and rockets. BIOGRAPHY: WINSTON CHURCHILL 1874–1965 Churchill had a long and controversial political career, which most people regarded as over in the years before the war. However, his outspoken opposition to Nazi Germany made him the ideal choice for prime minister in 1940. His determination, eloquence, and sense of humor made him a popular and successful leader. HOLOCAUST The Holocaust (“sacrifice by burning”) was an attempt to murder the entire Jewish people.

German concentration camps had existed since the 1930s, but this act of genocide was accelerated by Nazi leaders at the Wannsee Conference in 1942. About six million Jews died. WHO DISCOVERED THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS? In 1945, as Allied forces advanced, they found evidence of this monstrous crime. Jews from all over Europe had been rounded up, forced into cattle cars on trains, and taken to prison camps, along with other peoples the Nazis despised, such as Roma. Some victims were forced to work as slave labor; others were killed immediately in gas chambers. ATOM BOMB Throughout the war, the US had secretly been developing the most destructive weapon ever known—the atom bomb. This produced energy by nuclear fission. In August 1945, US planes dropped two atom bombs on Japan. Japan surrendered. WHY DID THE US DROP THE BOMB? The United States government wished to bring the war to a rapid end and prevent the loss of any more troops. Critics of the bomb believed that the extent of its power, and the resulting loss of so many civilian lives, was morally unacceptable.

FIND OUT MORE world war two - Why was Japan not worried about Soviet invasion during WWII? - History Stack Exchange Why was Japan not worried about Soviet invasion during WWII? up vote 4 down vote favorite 2 I just visited the Australian War Memorial in Canberra during my break. When I was walking in the WWII section, showing portraits of Australia battling against Japanese troops, I wondered why Japan decided to invade Southeast Asia and the Solomon Islands even if there was risk of potential Soviet invasion to Manchuria and the Japanese Archipelago? I will be grateful if anyone could answer that. 7 Quite trivial as it was the SU who feared that Japan could invade the Soviet Far East, while Germans were advancing towards Moscow. The SU was absolutely unable to fight on two very distant frontlines simultaneously. – Matt Oct 21 '16 at 5:56 3 The Japanese didn't really believe that anyone could successfully invade them. This was perhaps even a religious matter. See the origin of the term 'kamikazi' (= divine wind) in the destruction of the Chinese/Mongol invasion.

– jamesqf Oct 21 '16 at 6:20 @Matt German invasion of USSR was 1941, while Japan was fighting USSR in 1939. How do you explain those 2 years where SU was not fighting on two front lines? This is not a trivial question. – congusbongus Oct 21 '16 at 6:52 3 Why does Japan-China in the 30's not count as part of WWII? – axsvl77 Oct 21 '16 at 7:44 1 Keep in mind that Japan had emerged victorious in the Russo-Japanese war, and felt technologically superior – Matthaeus Oct 21 '16 at 10:18 up vote 9 down vote accepted To begin with, Japan, Germany, and Italy during WWII were aggressively invading others; the Soviet Union was "on defense". After German invasion, the Soviet Union was fighting for its survival. There was no capacity for the Soviet Union to expand towards Japan during world war II. Furthermore, the population of the Soviet Union was primarily near Europe, far from Japan.

Logistically, invading an island nation on the other side of Asia would be a huge undertaking. Even mounting an invasion from Siberia to North China would present huge challenges, with very little reward. In the 1930's, Japan had plans to invade the Soviet Union. The Japanese even started to invade from Manchuria ( Khalkhin-gol ) in 1939, but were crushed by the well organized Soviet Army. Despite the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which was signed in 1939, Soviet Union knew that Germany would be invading so they set about building their military. As Japan was busy in China, it was to their mutual advantage to sign a neutrality pact in 1941. It is noteworthy that after Germany was defeated, the Soviet Union did declare war Japan in late 1945 . However, the Japanese were more or less defeated at this point. Nonetheless, the threat of Soviet occupation of Japan likely hastened Japanese surrender to the USA. You might also be interested in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, where Russia and Japan fought each other in Manchuria. Both had high quality forces with very modern fighting skills.

10 the Soviet Union was "on defense" Finland, Estonia, Letonia, Lituania and Romania might have another POV. The rest of the answer is good. – SJuan76 Oct 21 '16 at 7:55 I agree with you, but it is easy to argue that those Soviet conquests were primarily for a defensive buffer rather than an aggressive expansion. Both interpretations are valid, i.e., Six of one, a half dozen of the other – axsvl77 Oct 21 '16 at 8:19 up vote 2 down vote Adding to @axsv177's great answer, you need to note that the Soviet Union (SU) had a very weak naval power compared with Japan as the table in the linked Wikipedia article on Naval history of World War II shows. Japan had 16 aircraft carriers while the SU had none. And much of the Soviet fleet on the Baltic Sea was blocked in Leningrad and Kronshtadt by Finnish and German minefields during 1941–1944 and maimed by mines and air attacks according to the following Wikipedia article on Russian Navy .

After the Revolution, the Navy's restoration was slow, and only with the beginning of industrialisation in 1930 was a large shipbuilding program developed, but not accomplished before the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet Union's portion of World War II. As a result, the Soviet Navy during World War II consisted of some old World War I-era ships, some modern pre-war built cruisers and destroyers, and a number of torpedo boats. Unfortunately, much of the Soviet fleet on the Baltic Sea was blocked in Leningrad and Kronshtadt by Finnish and German minefields during 1941–1944 and maimed by mines and air attacks, nevertheless numerous sorties by attack boats and submarines actions were conducted. Until Japan made a strategically foolish decision to attack Hawaii which invited the US into the war, Japan was winning the war in China (Manchuria) and other South East Asian countries. The SU was very weak in the east at the time without much naval power. There was no reason for Japan to be afraid of Soviet invasion.

Japan defeated Russia in Russo-Japanese war in 1905 and the main reasons for Russia's defeat were weak Russian naval power and Russia's internal political situation. Japan had confidence in its military power in World War II, too much of which led to its defeat and surrender. Why did Japan surrender? - The Boston Globe Ideas Why did Japan surrender? Sixty-six years ago, we dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. Now, some historians say that’s not what ended the war. (Keystone/Getty Images) General Douglas MacArthur, as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, accepted the unconditional surrender document signed by the Japanese. Add a personal message:(80 character limit) Your E-mail: Text size – + What ended World War II? For nearly seven decades, the American public has accepted one version of the events that led to Japan’s surrender. By the middle of 1945, the war in Europe was over, and it was clear that the Japanese could hold no reasonable hope of victory. After years of grueling battle, fighting island to island across the Pacific, Japan’s Navy and Air Force were all but destroyed. The production of materiel was faltering, completely overmatched by American industry, and the Japanese people were starving.

A full-scale invasion of Japan itself would mean hundreds of thousands of dead GIs, and, still, the Japanese leadership refused to surrender. But in early August 66 years ago, America unveiled a terrifying new weapon, dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In a matter of days, the Japanese submitted, bringing the fighting, finally, to a close. On Aug. 6, the United States marks the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing’s mixed legacy. The leader of our democracy purposefully executed civilians on a mass scale. Yet the bombing also ended the deadliest conflict in human history. In recent years, however, a new interpretation of events has emerged. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa - a highly respected historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara - has marshaled compelling evidence that it was the Soviet entry into the Pacific conflict, not Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that forced Japan’s surrender. His interpretation could force a new accounting of the moral meaning of the atomic attack. It also raises provocative questions about nuclear deterrence, a foundation stone of military strategy in the postwar period. And it suggests that we could be headed towards an utterly different understanding of how, and why, the Second World War came to its conclusion.

“Hasegawa has changed my mind,” says Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Making of the Atomic Bomb.” “The Japanese decision to surrender was not driven by the two bombings.” President Truman’s decision to go nuclear has long been a source of controversy. Many, of course, have argued that attacking civilians can never be justified. Then, in the 1960s, a “revisionist school” of historians suggested that Japan was in fact close to surrendering before Hiroshima - that the bombing was not necessary, and that Truman gave the go-ahead primarily to intimidate the Soviet Union with our new power. Hasegawa - who was born in Japan and has taught in the United States since 1990, and who reads English, Japanese, and Russian - rejects both the traditional and revisionist positions. According to his close examination of the evidence, Japan was not poised to surrender before Hiroshima, as the revisionists argued, nor was it ready to give in immediately after the atomic bomb, as traditionalists have always seen it. Instead, it took the Soviet declaration of war on Japan, several days after Hiroshima, to bring the capitulation.

Both the American and Japanese public have clung to the idea that the mushroom clouds ended the war. For the Japanese, Hiroshima is a potent symbol of their nation as victim, helping obscure their role as the aggressors and in atrocities that include mass rapes and beheading prisoners of war. For the Americans, Hiroshima has always been a means justified by the end. “This seems to touch a nerve,” observes Hasegawa. That may help explain why Hasegawa’s thesis, which he first detailed in an award-winning 2005 book and has continued to bolster with new material, is still little known outside of academic circles, says Ward Wilson, a nuclear weapons scholar who has drawn on Hasegawa’s insights in his own recent work. Measured against the decades of serious and settled thinking about World War II, Hasegawa’s scholarship feels radical. But another reason, Wilson argues, is that to look at history in this new light is to entertain what seem like shocking ideas. That the destruction of cities does not sway leaders. That what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not overly remarkable. And, strangest of all: That nuclear explosives may not be particularly effective weapons of war.

The Pacific War began in 1941 with the violent humiliation at Pearl Harbor. Japan already held parts of China, and quickly invaded New Guinea, the Dutch East Indies, Burma, and Singapore. Manila fell. The country enjoyed air supremacy across most of Southeast Asia; in February 1942, it even attacked Australia. Japan’s control was tightening, and it appeared unstoppable. After the epic Battle of Midway in the summer of 1942, however, the United States and its allies gained the momentum. Still, progress was slow as Marines hopped from atoll to island to atoll: wading through bloody coral shallows under a rain of shelling, engaging an enemy that was dug in, highly trained, and willing to fight to the death. The names of these tropical hells - Gaudalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa - have become Marine Corps legend. The casualties were heavy. By the summer of 1945, the Americans had cornered Japan and assembled a final invasion plan, codenamed Operation Downfall.

The first stage was scheduled for the fall, and would have opened with the landing of more than 700,000 troops on Kyushu, the southernmost of the big four islands. It would have been a larger operation than D-Day, certain to result in a bloody slaughter. Americans, then and today, have tended to assume that Japan’s leaders were simply blinded by their own fanaticism, forcing a catastrophic showdown for no reason other than their refusal to acknowledge defeat. This was, after all, a nation that trained its young men to fly their planes, freighted with explosives, into the side of American naval vessels. But Hasegawa and other historians have shown that Japan’s leaders were in fact quite savvy, well aware of their difficult position, and holding out for strategic reasons. Their concern was not so much whether to end the conflict, but how to end it while holding onto territory, avoiding war crimes trials, and preserving the imperial system. The Japanese could still inflict heavy casualties on any invader, and they hoped to convince the Soviet Union, still neutral in the Asian theater, to mediate a settlement with the Americans. Stalin, they calculated, might negotiate more favorable terms in exchange for territory in Asia.

It was a long shot, but it made strategic sense. On Aug. 6, the American bomber Enola Gay dropped its payload on Hiroshima, leaving the signature mushroom cloud and devastation on the ground, including something on the order of 100,000 killed. (The figures remain disputed, and depend on how the fatalities are counted.) As Hasegawa writes in his book “Racing the Enemy,” the Japanese leadership reacted with concern, but not panic. On Aug. 7, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo sent an urgent coded telegram to his ambassador in Moscow, asking him to press for a response to the Japanese request for mediation, which the Soviets had yet to provide. The bombing added a “sense of urgency,” Hasegawa says, but the plan remained the same. Very late the next night, however, something happened that did change the plan. The Soviet Union declared war and launched a broad surprise attack on Japanese forces in Manchuria. In that instant, Japan’s strategy was ruined. Stalin would not be extracting concessions from the Americans. And the approaching Red Army brought new concerns: The military position was more dire, and it was hard to imagine occupying communists allowing Japan’s traditional imperial system to continue.

Better to surrender to Washington than to Moscow. By the morning of Aug. 9, the Japanese Supreme War Council was meeting to discuss the terms of surrender. (During the meeting, the second atomic bomb killed tens of thousands at Nagasaki.) On Aug. 15, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. How is it possible that the Japanese leadership did not react more strongly to many tens of thousands of its citizens being obliterated? One answer is that the Japanese leaders were not greatly troubled by civilian causalities. As the Allies loomed, the Japanese people were instructed to sharpen bamboo sticks and prepare to meet the Marines at the beach. Yet it was more than callousness. The bomb - horrific as it was - was not as special as Americans have always imagined. In early March, several hundred B-29 Super Fortress bombers dropped incendiary bombs on downtown Tokyo. Some argue that more died in the resulting firestorm than at Hiroshima. People were boiled in the canals. The photos of charred Tokyo and charred Hiroshima are indistinguishable.

In fact, more than 60 of Japan’s cities had been substantially destroyed by the time of the Hiroshima attack, according to a 2007 International Security article by Wilson, who is a senior fellow at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. In the three weeks before Hiroshima, Wilson writes, 25 cities were heavily bombed. To us, then, Hiroshima was unique, and the move to atomic weaponry was a great leap, military and moral. But Hasegawa argues the change was incremental. “Once we had accepted strategic bombing as an acceptable weapon of war, the atomic bomb was a very small step,” he says. To Japan’s leaders, Hiroshima was yet another population center leveled, albeit in a novel way. If they didn’t surrender after Tokyo, they weren’t going to after Hiroshima. Hasegawa’s work is an important new entry into the scholarly conversation, reconstructing the conflicting perspectives of Russians, Americans, and Japanese, and concluding that the bomb played a secondary role.

Barton Bernstein, a professor of history emeritus at Stanford University, is the unofficial dean of American atomic bomb scholarship and counts himself as both a fan and a critic of Hasegawa. Hasegawa’s ability to read three languages, Bernstein says, gives him a unique advantage over other scholars. Hasegawa spent years working through primary documents, with a deep understanding of linguistic and cultural nuance. His knowledge was especially valuable because historians of the period face such fragmentary and contradictory evidence, in part because the Japanese destroyed many documents. But therein lies the weakness of the Hasegawa interpretation as well, Bernstein says. After a long war and in the space of a few days, the Japanese leadership was hit with two extraordinary events - Hiroshima and the Soviet invasion - and sorting out cause and effect, based on incomplete documentation, may prove impossible. “When you look through all the evidence, I think it is hard to weigh one or the other more heavily,” Bernstein said. “The analysis is well intentioned, but more fine-grained than the evidence comfortably allows.” Yet Bernstein, Hasegawa, and many historians agree on one startling point.

The public view that the atomic bomb was the decisive event that ended World War II is not supported by the facts. What happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki has framed the world’s thinking about nuclear weapons. Those days in August remain the only instance of nuclear war. The sheer horrors of the destruction, and the lingering poison of radioactivity, inform what has come to be called nuclear deterrence: No sane nation would bring a nuclear attack on itself, and so having nuclear weapons deters your enemies from attacking. When two rival nations have nuclear weapons, as during the Cold War, the result is stalemate. Hasegawa’s scholarship disturbs this simple logic. If the atomic bomb alone could not compel the Japanese to submit, then perhaps the nuclear deterrent is not as strong as it seems. In fact, Wilson argues, history suggests that leveling population centers, by whatever method, does not force surrender. The Allied firebombing of Dresden in February of 1945 killed many people, but the Germans did not capitulate. The long-range German bombing of London did not push Churchill towards acquiescence.

And it is nearly impossible to imagine that a bomb detonated on American soil, even one that immolated a large city, would prompt the nation to bow in surrender. If killing large numbers of civilians does not have a military impact, then what, Wilson asks, is the purpose of keeping nuclear weapons? We know they are dangerous. If they turn out not to be strategically effective, then nuclear weapons are not trump cards, but time bombs beneath our feet. Whatever the merits of this position, it suffers the great handicap of trying to change, fundamentally, how several generations have thought about the atomic age, says Linton Brooks, who has served in arms control and nuclear policy positions in several administrations. “Fifty years of telling ourselves that these things are different has sort of made them different,” says Linton. “That is the mystique of nuclear weapons.” Hasegawa’s own relationship to the events of August of 1945 testifies to the degree to which, all these years later, they resist clear appraisal. As a child, Hasegawa watched the Tokyo firebombing from his roof, and he can still recall the eerie orange glow on the horizon.

Growing up, he felt anger at the Japanese government for bringing the conflict onto its people. Later, working as a scholar in America, he accepted the position that the atomic bombing was necessary to end the war. Today he views America’s bombings of Japan’s cities - Hiroshima and Tokyo included - as war crimes. Yet, he adds, they are crimes America should not apologize for until Japan comes to terms with war crimes of its own. These are the evolving views of a man who has mustered the courage to look at an ugly period of history without flinching - something that most people, Americans and Japanese alike, have found themselves unable to do. Gareth Cook is a Globe columnist and former editor of Ideas. © Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company. Cold War | international politics | Britannica.com international politics United States Cold War, the open yet restricted rivalry that developed after World War II between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. The Cold War was waged on political, economic, and propaganda fronts and had only limited recourse to weapons.

The term was first used by the English writer George Orwell in an article published in 1945 to refer to what he predicted would be a nuclear stalemate between “two or three monstrous super-states, each possessed of a weapon by which millions of people can be wiped out in a few seconds.” It was first used in the United States by the American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch in a speech at the State House in Columbia, South Carolina , in 1947. A brief treatment of the Cold War follows. For full treatment, see international relations . Origins of the Cold War Following the surrender of Nazi Germany in May 1945 near the close of World War II, the uneasy wartime alliance between the United States and Great Britain on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other began to unravel. By 1948 the Soviets had installed left-wing governments in the countries of eastern Europe that had been liberated by the Red Army . The Americans and the British feared the permanent Soviet domination of eastern Europe and the threat of Soviet-influenced communist parties coming to power in the democracies of western Europe.

The Soviets, on the other hand, were determined to maintain control of eastern Europe in order to safeguard against any possible renewed threat from Germany, and they were intent on spreading communism worldwide, largely for ideological reasons. The Cold War had solidified by 1947–48, when U.S. aid provided under the Marshall Plan to western Europe had brought those countries under American influence and the Soviets had installed openly communist regimes in eastern Europe. Residents of Berlin awaiting a cargo plane carrying food during the Soviet blockade of the city in … Walter Sanders—Time Life Pictures/Getty Images The struggle between superpowers Alabama claims The Cold War reached its peak in 1948–53.

In this period the Soviets unsuccessfully blockaded the Western-held sectors of West Berlin (1948–49); the United States and its European allies formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a unified military command to resist the Soviet presence in Europe (1949); the Soviets exploded their first atomic warhead (1949), thus ending the American monopoly on the atomic bomb; the Chinese communists came to power in mainland China (1949); and the Soviet-supported communist government of North Korea invaded U.S.-supported South Korea in 1950, setting off an indecisive Korean War that lasted until 1953. 20th-century international relations: The coming of the Cold War, 1945–57 From 1953 to 1957 Cold War tensions relaxed somewhat, largely owing to the death of the longtime Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1953; nevertheless, the standoff remained. A unified military organization among the Soviet-bloc countries, the Warsaw Pact , was formed in 1955; and West Germany was admitted into NATO that same year. Another intense stage of the Cold War was in 1958–62.

The United States and the Soviet Union began developing intercontinental ballistic missiles , and in 1962 the Soviets began secretly installing missiles in Cuba that could be used to launch nuclear attacks on U.S. cities. This sparked the Cuban missile crisis (1962), a confrontation that brought the two superpowers to the brink of war before an agreement was reached to withdraw the missiles. Aerial photograph of Medium Range Ballistic Missile (MRBM) Launch Site 1 near San Cristóbal, … U.S. Department of Defense/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library The Cuban missile crisis showed that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union were ready to use nuclear weapons for fear of the other’s retaliation (and thus of mutual atomic annihilation). The two superpowers soon signed the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty of 1963, which banned aboveground nuclear weapons testing. But the crisis also hardened the Soviets’ determination never again to be humiliated by their military inferiority, and they began a buildup of both conventional and strategic forces that the United States was forced to match for the next 25 years.

Britannica Stories Scientists Ponder Menopause in Killer Whales Throughout the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union avoided direct military confrontation in Europe and engaged in actual combat operations only to keep allies from defecting to the other side or to overthrow them after they had done so. Thus, the Soviet Union sent troops to preserve communist rule in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956) , Czechoslovakia (1968) , and Afghanistan (1979) . For its part, the United States helped overthrow a left-wing government in Guatemala (1954) , supported an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba (1961), invaded the Dominican Republic (1965) and Grenada (1983) , and undertook a long (1964–75) and unsuccessful effort to prevent communist North Vietnam from bringing South Vietnam under its rule (see Vietnam War ). Learn about an unsuccessful escape attempt from East Germany during the Cold War. Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz Learn about the last successful escape from East Germany via the Baltic Sea.

Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz Czechs confronting Soviet troops in Prague, August 21, 1968. Soviet forces had invaded … Libor Hajsky—CTK/AP Images USA Facts In the course of the 1960s and ’70s, however, the bipolar struggle between the Soviet and American blocs gave way to a more-complicated pattern of international relationships in which the world was no longer split into two clearly opposed blocs. A major split had occurred between the Soviet Union and China in 1960 and widened over the years, shattering the unity of the communist bloc. In the meantime, western Europe and Japan achieved dynamic economic growth in the 1950s and ’60s, reducing their relative inferiority to the United States. Less-powerful countries had more room to assert their independence and often showed themselves resistant to superpower coercion or cajoling .

The 1970s saw an easing of Cold War tensions as evinced in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) that led to the SALT I and II agreements of 1972 and 1979, respectively, in which the two superpowers set limits on their antiballistic missiles and on their strategic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons. That was followed by a period of renewed Cold War tensions in the early 1980s as the two superpowers continued their massive arms buildup and competed for influence in the Third World. But the Cold War began to break down in the late 1980s during the administration of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev . He dismantled the totalitarian aspects of the Soviet system and began efforts to democratize the Soviet political system. When communist regimes in the Soviet-bloc countries of eastern Europe collapsed in 1989–90, Gorbachev acquiesced in their fall. The rise to power of democratic governments in East Germany, Poland , Hungary, and Czechoslovakia was quickly followed by the unification of West and East Germany under NATO auspices , again with Soviet approval.

People from East and West Berlin gathering at the Berlin Wall on November 10, 1989, one day after … AP Cold War - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up) In 1946 Sir Winston Churchill gave an address on foreign affairs at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. In it he uttered this ominous sentence: "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent [of Europe]." These words described the beginning of the Cold War. The term was first used by the English writer George Orwell in an article published in 1945 to refer to what he predicted would be a nuclear stalemate between "two or three monstrous super-states, each possessed of a weapon by which millions of people can be wiped out in a few seconds." It was first used in the United States by American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch in a speech at the State House in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1947, and it may be defined as a condition of competition, tension, and conflict short of actual war between the Soviet Union and the United States.

The startling and rapid political changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe beginning in 1989 brought the Cold War to an end. (See also glasnost; perestroika.) Article Contributors Japan and USSR sign nonaggression pact - Apr 13, 1941 - HISTORY.com Japan and USSR sign nonaggression pact Share this: Japan and USSR sign nonaggression pact Author Japan and USSR sign nonaggression pact URL Publisher A+E Networks During World War II, representatives from the Soviet Union and Japan sign a five-year neutrality agreement. Although traditional enemies, the nonaggression pact allowed both nations to free up large numbers of troops occupying disputed territory in Manchuria and Outer Mongolia to be used for more pressing purposes. The Soviet-Japanese pact came nearly two years after the Soviet Union signed a similar agreement with Nazi Germany, dividing much of Eastern Europe between the two countries. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Nonaggression Pact allowed Nazi leader Adolf Hitler to move German forces to the West for his major offensives of 1939 to 1941 and bought Soviet leader Joseph Stalin time to prepare the empire for what he saw as its inevitable involvement in World War II.

However, on June 22, 1941, just two months after the Soviet-Japanese nonaggression pact was signed, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the USSR. Stalin was caught by surprise, and the German Wehrmacht penetrated deep into the Soviet Union, killing millions of Russians and reaching the outskirts of Moscow before the Red Army was able to begin a successful counteroffensive. Although Japanese offensives into the eastern USSR during this time might have resulted in the defeat of the Soviet Union, Japan was forced to concentrate all its resources in a resistance against the massive U.S. counteroffensive in the Pacific, underway by fall 1942. During the Yalta conference in early 1945, Joseph Stalin, at the urging of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, agreed to declare war against Japan within three months of Germany’s defeat. On August 8, 1945, true to Stalin’s promise, the Soviet Union declared war against Japan, and the next day the Red Army invaded Manchuria. The same day, the United States dropped its second atomic bomb on Japan, devastating Nagasaki as it had Hiroshima three days earlier.

Faced with the choice of destruction or surrender, Japan chose the latter. On August 15, one week after the Soviet declaration of war, Emperor Hirohito announced the Japanese surrender on national radio, urging the Japanese people to “endure the unendurable.” Related Videos

Question: In which year of World War II did the Soviet Union declare war on Japan?
Answer: 1945